By now I guess no one still expects me to keep up with my self-imposed one blog post a day June challenge. No one had noticed I guess!
It's silly because I have been rather excited about my food this month and tried new recipes and been eating very well. But finding time and the inspiration to write up is another thing. Oh well, I guess no one really wants that anyway. My time gets sucked up by Instagram, which I have just installed and tried using. It's been available for Android phones for two months but I was ignorant of that and still used Picplz. Only picplz is now closing down so it's been my cue to at long last use the real thing. I am also catching up with Mad Men, thankfully while it's the European championship, so apologies for preferring the company of Jon Hamm to yours, my dear but invisible readers.

But I think everyone agrees that a blog post about some baking is always exciting. So here goes for today's snack.

I know that prunes and walnuts are not per se typically French, but I can't help thinking that this combination is evocative of the South of France, where both prunes and walnuts are being grown -though not always close to one another- and celebrated not just for their health properties but also for their tastes.

This is a recipe I adapted from this blog (and their book). I have modified it a little after I made it once, long ago.

This is a cake (pronounced kek, ha ha, French for loaf cake) that will be like a good friend to you, a rustic friend that will comfort with a cup of tea, that will be a perfect substitute for your usual breakfast, that is hearty without being rich and that will transport you to the heart of France, the land of fattened ducks and black truffles, where old men still walk around with bérets (and often a baguette too). Perhaps I have chosen to bake it today because I long to visit my parents' home again? This is made with the walnuts they always thoughtf…

Sometimes the girls want to help me cook (cook, not bake which is an entirely different process I think). It's a good thing, you know, to want to both help and prepare healthy food that they're -hopefully- going to eat afterwards. So if we have time ahead, we do this. You really need a lot of time if they're going to peel, then chop veg and quality control every step of the recipe. They tend to eat up all the carrot peel so I make sure to buy organic ones. You also need to hover like an eagle and make sure no one's going to cut off a phalange or something. Channel your inner angel and muster all your patience too ;-)

In a bid to make them eat veg and try and teach them about the country we live in, we decided to make Bouneschlupp, literally a "gulp of beans". It's a soup made with green beans, potatoes, carrots and sometimes sausage or bacon, but remember we eat mostly vegetarian these days.